erogers

In the visual editor

If stuff like this was posted on the dev blog you would be getting far fewer questions about the timeline.
Maybe the problem is that the info is scattered in too many places.
I now count six big sources of info: Dev blog, wiki, forum, Codex, Planet, and beta listserv. Then all of the developer blogs. I didn’t even know about codex and planet sites until just now, becuase I was looking to the Dev blog for this info. ww.wp.xz.cn almost seems like an after-thought at this point.
That’s too many different places to scour for information.

Yes, we need to update the DevBlog more often. Bad devs. We’re experimenting with Planet WordPress. Many of the main contributors post development updates to their blogs. Planet WordPresswill aggregate all of that.
As for the state of 1.3, we are at a “fairly” mature alpha stage. There are still some features we would like to finish up and include, but the time to draw the line is nigh. The 1.3 page in codex is the master 1.3 checklist and the best place to get an idea of where we’re at. I keep it updated.
So, what’s going on at the moment? Matt’s Magpie comment on his blog hints at some Dashboard progress. We’ve got someone working on an exporter and coordinating with some other projects to decide on the format. The Geo stuff is being turned into a more fully featured Location plugin. Security audits are ongoing. I’ve been working on some I18N improvements. API allowing plugins to more easily add pages to the admin UI is in. We now support feed enclosures. The page feature is maturing nicely. More people are creating themes, and counter-spam plugins are emerging left and right. Some good documentation is going into codex.
When will it be released? Hopefully this year, but we need to get into beta and start fixing bugs before we can say. At the moment, there is no set release. See Michelangelo’s response to the Pope for the best estimate.